Photo by limonada licensed under Creative Commons.

A few months back I moved out of my parents house. I turned in the life of living in comfort and cleanliness for a life on my own in a house with four other twenty-something bachelors. The transition from living at home to living on my own has gone pretty smoothly, however, it’s still taking some time to get used to how dirty things are when you live in a house without a woman’s touch.

When I first moved into the house I was amazed at the poor condition of the bathroom. I’ve always been well aware of the whole joke about how mens bathrooms are always horrible, but I had never really experienced it for myself. I’m and extremely clean and organized person, so I always chalked it up to be a simple sitcom exaggeration and not an actual fact. My how I was wrong.

I couldn’t accurately depict the condition of the bathrooms in the house to save my life, but I’ll do what I can. The bathroom in the master bedroom (which I shared until my roommate got married and moved out) had a thick sheet of dust and hair so thick that it could almost be confused as a rug and all the fixtures were covered in rust, grime, and half rinsed-out toothpaste spit. These bathrooms were so bad that when they “got cleaned” they were still unacceptable for the presence of a female. These bathrooms were so bad that I just let them be for a few months because I couldn’t find enough time in the day to set aside to even put a dent in the mess that was our bathroom.

Well, I finally decided I couldn’t stand it anymore. Early last week I was driving home around 11:00 and I decided I just couldn’t take it anymore. I made a detour over to our local Walmart (which thankfully is open 24-hours now) in search of cleaning supplies and a few extras for the house. I ended up spending $90 on an overkill of cleaning supplies, a box of latex cloves (so I didn’t have to touch a single thing), a new shower curtain AND liner (we only had a nasty infected curtain before), matching hand towels (the guys can keep their dirty personal towels), a nice candle with a mirrored base (to help with smell and give the illusion it’s actually nice in there), and a bad of starbursts. Ok, those weren’t for the bathroom, but I needed something to treat myself with after all I was about to go through.

It took me 2 hours to clean the bathroom, but once it was done it looked amazing. Though in all honesty, it looked like back alley of a bar before hand, so anything would have been an improvement. The next morning when the roommates woke up and noticed the bathroom I made it a point to show them where all the cleaning supplies were now being kept and tried to encourage their use. It’s been about a week now and it’s still holding up. It’s not looking as good as the first night, but it hasn’t completely fallen apart yet. I’m not sure how long it will last, but I’m hoping the clean up job I did will inspire them to try and keep it up. I really don’t want to have to become the Bathroom Nazi.

posted by Christopher Schnese

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